Soviet Log 36
Yaroslavl We picked things up with four days of travel before reaching the outskirts of Yaroslavl, a town close to Moscow, and the closest we could safely get in the Josie. As usual, offtime spurred much wheeling, dealing, training, and tech projects but we emerged stronger with new-found powers (archmage, augment/driver, and infiltrators). We then said our goodbyes to the friends/crew of the Josie and departed in our shuttle. It's cloaking allowed us to get quite close to Yaroslavl but we needed to land on the outskirts of the farmland (approximately 2 hours travel way) for risk of getting seen. Without a vehicle, we were facing a long walk so we decided to acquire a vehicle. However, probably due to the raging war we were unable to find any grand theft auto candidates. As a result, we disguised ourselves (both magically and skillfully) as a political officer's contingent and hiked to the highway to flag down a vehicle. The true genius of our disguise paid off when our 'incredibly hot girl power disguises' (i.e. Katya made her luck save by an impressive 24) immediately drew the attention of a passing military convoy. The convoy was more than happy to give the totally-not-the-swedish-bikini-team hitchhiker's a ride into town. During the drive we performed some distraction/pickpocket shenanigans so we could get a look at their papers. Roq did an admirable job as wing-woman picking up the slack when Eva couldn't quite bring herself to flirt effectively with Lieselotte watching from the car behind. We got a good look at the identity papers but the orders and other documents were in an envelope that Katya couldn't quite get a hold of. Logger's Note: Overall, the party's ability to Beguile has significantly improved with the last two sessions highlighting this fact when managed to muddle through quite well despite some mediocre (by her standards) Beguile rolls from Katya. Before long, we arrived at the city checkpoint. Naturally, they asked who we were and for our documents of which we had none. Our new found army friends helped by backing up parts of our tale about our car being stolen with our documents on our long journey from Siberia. After a group beguile we were remanded into the custody of our military friends who resolved to take us directly to HQ. We were unable to convince them to drop us off prior to visiting HQ so we were forced to take dramatic action. After prudently activating our Rock Heart items (sagely created by Mei Linn a few days earlier), Mei Linn cast her post-coital 'little death' spell which immediately plunged the driver into unconsciousness. Before the other soldiers could react, Katya yanked the steering wheel and plunged the car into a rolling crash toward a nearby cliff drop. Combat ensued. After quickly exiting the vehicle (took some bennies from those unable to teleport), we set about 'silencing' the remaining soldiers. We made some attempt to stay low-key since witnesses were nearby but the battle was still eventful enough to draw their attention. One was kicked to death, another was Translocated into open space, one was tripped with a scarf but regrettably broke his neck in the fall and the sleeping Colonel was rifled for his papers and then rolled off the cliff. Cyta created an illusion of a military squad to clear the imediate area of onlookers but the people on the other side of the river were to far away for us to deal with. We didn't stick around to make sure we'd killed all the soldiers since that would have risked the arrival of further reinforcements. Instead, we climbed into the remaining car and Eva drove us away. After escaping the scene of the conflict, we ditched the car disguised ourselves as locals, and set about finding a hideout. Streetsmarts led us to a Thieve's Den above a market. We haggled down the price of a room from 'daylight robbery' to 'mild rip-off' and took refuge to regroup and plan our next move. The last plan this logger remembers involved splitting the party with half prudently forging documents while the other half recklessly scoured the city for information. What could possibly go wrong! We will resume in two weeks after the Christmas break. Rewards 11 Generic 1 Combat Karlid 4 Academic Points and 1 Benny Eva 1 Benny